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Working under the name DREKKA since 1996, composer Michael Anderson has toured, traveled, and collaborated extensively; collecting memories and building a very personal archive of sound that dates back to the mid-1980's. DREKKA has released a large body of work on labels such as Dais, Auris Apothecary, Morc, Silber, and Anderson's own label, Bluesanct. Anderson has also recorded and toured as a member of such as projects as Turn Pale, Jessica Bailiff, In Gowan Ring, Stone Breath, Annelies Monseré, Rivulets, and Dylan Ettinger. DREKKA owes something to the soundscapes and non-linear impressionism of Cindytalk or COIL, the industrial gravity of Einstürzende Neubauten or Hafler Trio, and the cinematic collaborations of Edward Artemiev/Andrei Tarkovsky or Simon Fisher Turner/Derek Jarman. But his work is very apparently unique and personal. Throughout years of performing and recording, DREKKA has explored early industrial tape culture, fragile bedroom noise-folk, and expansive cinematic textures. His work and performances touch on themes of silence, memory, and forgetfulness. But rather than obscure himself, as is so often the effect of experimental music, DREKKA functions as a direct line into Anderson's mind and his tenuous cache of memories. These personal aspects and this fragility are clearly on display, rather than being obfuscated by poetic abstractions. While "haunting" and "hypnogogic" are words often used to describe experimental music and art, DREKKA unequivocally occupies and deals in those dark spaces which comprise the tenuous province of memory and dreams. Those are the real ghosts of time and sound. But just as prominent, particularly in the live setting, is a sort of confrontation; a wrestling with frenetic energy that approaches mania or ecstasy. Just as DREKKA's recordings serve not to obscure but to exhibit Michael Anderson's mind, his performances serve to exhibit his person, his body. DREKKA's audiences behold not an anonymous face in the glow of a laptop, but a man riding his flimsy card table strewn with tape players, bells, trinkets, metal, and pedals. They behold a man's spirit riding him, contact microphone in mouth, hands shifting cassettes collected over time and distance. DREKKA's audiences behold a confrontation of spirit, body, memory, and sound.
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